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A warning to anyone not interested in reading a tirade: stop here.

I just finished seeing the movie The Corporation.  Aside from being a brilliantly made film, it is very direct and damning.  Damning not just of corporations but of people are part of the institution, the corporate machinery, so to say.  I can’t help thinking of all of us here at UVA who will graduate this May (or have already graduated) and will go on to work in the corporate world.  Will they have seen the movie? Will they have considered the social/environmental/political implications of the choice they are making?

Of course, I’m not saying that no-one should work for a large corporation—that would be almost too righteous.  I am just wondering if people, educated at UVA (with all its merits and demerits), will consider, even for a moment, how much corporations are eroding our right to self-preservation.

I grew up in Calcutta where I, with my brother and sister, would go shopping for groceries with my mom/aunt/granma in farmer’s bazaars.  If the price of gram or coriander at one stall was too high, we would simply move to another stall.  One might argue that with the likes of Harris Teeter and Kroger, etc, we might still have some price-setting agency by “moving to the next stall,” but do we, really?  These corporations homogenise food prices of water to potatoes, lentils and apples, rice and wheat for you the consumer in the US, and for them, the farmers in Indonesia.  In effect, a corporation comes to control the lives of not just the people who are affected by the immediately by the exchange (you the buyer and the corporation that owns the grocery chain), but also third parties who had no say in the choice but will inherit the legacy of the choice made by the consumer and the manufacturer.

These third parties, in this case, tend to be poor, developing world warmers.   They have to pay the price for buying the same grain that is descended from their forefathers but is now controlled by a Monsanto patent because some clever executives thought that it is possible to sell the idea that it is such farmers who are pirating the crop and denying the corporates their fair share.  Such an idea does not sound ludicrous to some, and that scares me.

What scares me even more is that so many people around me will soon take up a job at a Fortune 500.  Like the movie points out, people are great on a one-to-one level, but as executives, as decision-makers and agents of the company they work for, they are beasts.  Even though a lot of these people feel that they not doing anything “bad,” they refuse to look at the bigger picture.  Philip Morris might say they’re investing millions of dollars into cancer research, but for every dollar they spend in cancer research (and I’m making this whole example up, by the way) they will earn two dollars by managing their public image of being a caring and considerate, personable and humane being.  People will smoke more of their cigarettes believing that a company that pays to research such an epidemic as cancer will clearly uphold their interests.  Wrong. Start over.

In any case, one resolution I’ve made after seeing the movie is that I’m going to stop by genetically-modified food as much as possible.  It is very difficult in the US to find cheap organic food, and this isn’t the case in Europe.  I hate to admit to myself what a couch potato I have become.  Back in school in London, I remember protesting with my class outside the Houses of Parliament against Franken foods.  It is easier to protest to a government and be heard when the corporate interest in not so stiflingly close to that of the government’s.  But that’s not to say that we, here in the US, should just sit on our ass and allow the Corporation to manufacture our consent, to manufacture our ideas and bully our kids into nagging us for that tenth toy of the week.

We are still young, and the choice is very much our own.

I have another interview tomorrow, but I couldn’t care less about it.  The pay is shabby and I am likely not going to find a place cheap enough to justify moving to DC.  It’s pretty easy to get disillusioned by this whole job search thing if you let it get to you, but if you can pretend for a while that you have a single-track mind which thinks single-track thoughts (i.e., ah, job, where, what), then you’re set.  Apparently, I don’t do too well when it comes to applying my own theories to myself.

I haven’t written here in a while. So what? I look at other people’s blogs and they look equally neglected, with a few exceptions.  I am surprised that I am still up writing an entry in my blog after months of blogger’s block.  I just wanted to pause from writing letters to employers who use good quality resume paper to wipe their ass with.

I am happy that I am not losing my cynicism—the last I checked it was still going strong.  What helps is that I just finished reading Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris.  He is a cruel writer, to say the least.  It’s a very funny insider’s look at Americans in Paris, which I guess anyone can say a lot about, but he does a great job of mixing sarcasm, judgement and grumpiness.

Alright, I hope I can start updating my blog again.  No promises just yet.

Another week gone by. Fall is here to stay. I love this weather.

I know I haven’t written in a while, so I’ll try to cover as much as I can.  If you read the entry about Prof Lawrence from early October, you will remember that he stood me up. Well, he more than made up for it. He was deeply apologetic in class when we meet after that Saturday and asked me out post haste. We met later that week, on Friday, to go eat lunch at First Wok.

What a truly fantastic lunch with a truly fantastic professor! (I may want to revise this assessment of him, now that I got my paper back! grrr). We talked about everything, contrary to what I expected (the whole lunch being about only Africa). I also revealed to him that I plan on travelling to Kashmir. He was really excited and said that more people our age need to transform their lives and stop being prefab about it. I was indeed thrilled that he liked the idea and he egged me on. I, myself, haven’t made up my mind about it. I am trying to save some money right now so that the trip can materialise, so we’ll see.

That weekend, I also remember seeing Private Eyes (the play) with Shweta at Culbreth. It wasn’t all that special but I’m doing my best to appreciate what other students at UVa spend a lot of time creating. And I’m not sure if that was the weekend before Fall Break, but if it was, I also streaked the lawn that weekend. It was very impromptu.

I went upstairs from my room to hang out with Kelly and Lindsay, and Kelly later offered that we drink Gin and Tonic. The Gin was pretty cheap (yes it was cheap) but we drank it nonetheless. At some point, after fiddling with online translation machines, we decided that it was time to streak and it would only get colder (from that point on in the semester) so the best time to do it was then. So we did it.

We dressed warm, and brought out duvets with us. When we got there we found there were many parties in progress. It was 3:30 AM. (Wow, that’s late for UVa). We were so bummed we decided to stroll the entire length of the lawn eight times (we had to do it four times back and forth because we’re fourth-years). The entire process took 45 minutes. Various lawnies and party-goers were taking pictures. They may have one of my hot butt as well… Darn it, you’ll have to check with them.

But that weekend was especially fun because I got to spend time doing nothing. I, of all people, indulged in video-gamery. Donkey Konga isn’t all that bad and Galaxoid (?) got me hooked. I also learned how to play Twister that weekend. I battled Smokey in a v. memorable 30-minute challenge. I won. But not without a little (shamelessly unfair) help from Kelly who basically tipped Smokey over.

Now, back to more recent things. Thursday night was the last time we went out to our Migrant Aid camp. I will miss going out to Covesville every week to hang out with teenagers and 20-somethings and learning Spanish in the process (for real!). I’m not sure if I was of a lot of help to them, which is why I feel they taught me more. Our last night will always remain special for me, for it was the night that took my pumpkin-carving virginity. Annemieke, who had also never carved a pumpkin before, was equally taken aback when we realised that emptying pumpkins was not unlike trying to feel up a thick wad of cobwebs. Eww. But we prevailed. Our pumpkin was complete with a Mickey-Mouse-shaped hole in its head. Chance ingenuity and beginner’s luck? I think so.

And Friday evening rocked thanks to Liz’s (and Yogi’s) birthday fiesta at Maharaja. I don’t like their food anymore but I went for Liz because I love her so much and she’s really cool (and now I know her violent side from how she beat up her piñata). Moste memorable quote from the evening: Nina talking about how oily her hair was: “Yeah, I haven’t washed my hair in a while and it’s so oily, oily enough for US troops to invade.” Fantastic.

And then, to top off the evening, I saw The Motorcycle Diaries with Shweta and Divya. It was a very personal movie, I think, and very beautiful and moving. What I liked most about the movie was how uniquely and thoroughly we get to know the person Che Guevara is (or was in 1952). Two thumbs (and a toe) up to the movie! I’m also looking forward to some movies being sponsored by Offscreen as part of the Political Film series (particularly Uncovered: The War on Iraq).

And while we’re on the subject of films, Vinit sent me a clip from the Conan O’Brien show parodying how all tech support call centres are now located in India. It was maddeningly hilarious. But it sketches India in a Western hegemonic light. I agree that the humour is pretty light, but the video is very much in keeping with what the West wants to see in India and how India ought to be portrayed. And this is why I feel the video, even if unintentionally, clearly draws a line between the West and the Other. Watch it and let me know what you think.

Erica’s birthday celebrations were the best. She had 12+ shots. And she is the coolest, most supremest drunk ever. Some quotes will have to be recorded here for posterity:

To the waiter: “Are you Polish? ’Cause I want to make Polish babies right now.”

To the waiter again: “I left you my number. You’re almost Polish and that makes you really cool. Call me.”

On the way back to her place in Todd’s car: “You guys are all hot. I’ll have sex with all of you. I’ll have sex with this car ’cause you guys are all in it. I’ll have sex with anything. I’ll have sex with everyone.”

Erica: “My parents are really liberal.”

Me: “Are they liberal enough to buy you sex toys?”

Erica: “Yeah, I’m sure they’d buy me sex toys if I put that on my Birthday wish list… and then we can all have sex… with sex toys.”

“The world needs to have more Spidermen.”

“I like Toby [the waiter] ’cause a Spiderman and him aren’t too different. All I need is someone with a web so they can pull me closer to their body. That’s hot.”

Oh, Erica, how we love you. Let’s do this again. Say, next weekend?